Eric Adams met with Donald Trump today at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, only communicating his plans to travel for the meeting last night. The mayor released a statement afterwards saying that he and the president-elect “briefly touched on a number of issues,” focusing specifically on federal infrastructure investments in the city, bringing manufacturing jobs to the Bronx, and the “positive impact on public safety in our country” brought on by the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
The New York Times reports that Adams met with the president-elect for a lunch that lasted roughly one hour. Also present were Trump’s son Eric, New York billionaire and Trump’s envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, and Frank Carone, a trusted advisor to the mayor and his former chief of staff, according to a person that witnessed the meeting. However, the mayor’s official statement this afternoon did not confirm or deny the presence of anyone other than Trump during their meeting.
Adams had evaded questions about whether he would meet with the president-elect as recently as Monday, when he told reporters that “right now, there’s no definite plan, but we will announce when it’s put in place.” He was similarly noncommittal when speaking to ABC 7 Eyewitness News yesterday about whether he would attend Trump’s inauguration, saying that he and his team were “still trying to figure out how we’re moving that weekend.” Adams only announced today’s trip at around 6 p.m. last night through a statement from his Deputy Mayor for Communications, Fabien Levy.
The New York City Mayor is currently facing a criminal trial in April on federal corruption charges related to his 2021 campaign, with prosecutors alleging that he solicited campaign funds from foreign nationals and engaged in a bribery scheme. Adams has consistently declared his innocence and stated that the charges against him are due to his political conflict with the Biden White House, stemming from what Adams claims was a lack of federal support in managing the influx of migrants into the city. “I should not have been charged,” the mayor said in a press briefing on December 29th. “I believe I was targeted because of my stance to protect the city from the migrants and asylum seeker issues that we were facing.”
President-elect Trump has expressed his willingness to pardon Adams, agreeing with the mayor’s framing of the situation with the Biden White House. In a press conference last month, Trump said that Adams was “treated pretty unfairly” and that he would “certainly look at” the option of a pardon. In his statement today, Adams refuted what he called “inaccurate speculation” that their discussion today included any talk of pardoning him of his charges, saying that those who suggest otherwise “clearly care more about politics than people.”
Trump has also indicated his willingness to use federal authority to change local policy in New York. A congressional delegation of New York Republicans that met with Trump last week said that they had a “productive meeting” with the president-elect, which included discussions on overturning the recently-implemented congestion pricing in Manhattan.
